


Sanctuary

by Weirdlet



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Kink Meme, Mpreg, Original Female Character - Freeform, PTSD, Steve has communcation issues, Threesome - M/M/M, also Clint is kind of quietly awesome, chewy fluff, emotionally overwrought, for the most part Clint POV, if Clint Barton didn't have bad luck he'd have no luck at all, occasional offscreen sex and violence, paranoid dads, raising offspring, so does Bucky for that matter, unethical HYDRA medical nonsense, unethical medical nonsense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2014-06-28
Packaged: 2018-02-06 13:35:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 17,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1859922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weirdlet/pseuds/Weirdlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for a kink-meme fill, wherein Clint Barton and Bucky Barnes have hate-sex, resulting in accidental offspring due to nefarious HYDRA experiments.  Neither of them want out of the kid's life, so they have to work out their relationship with each other and with Steve.  Meanwhile, said kid is set to have Hawkeye's vision and acrobatic skill with Bucky's super-soldier strength and reflexes, and everyone is terrified of the day she gets a projectile weapon in her hands.</p><p>A Barnes, a Barton, and a Rogers attempt to raise a kid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Sanctuary:** Or, The Thing Where Merida Has Three Daddies.  
  
  
(slight AU re: Hydra infiltration, author is also not caught up on AoS canon.  Hydra’s presence is known, but it is not an all-consuming cancer. SHIELD still exists and is fighting a war with them.)

 

  
  
  
The op goes south, and Clint finds himself in a hole with an assassin (not himself, despite Tony’s assertions his time in the circus does not leave him with a case of third-personism, thank you), and no way out.  
  
The man is hateful and hot and broken, and he smirks like a gunslinger out of a bad western.  
  
What the hell else was gonna happen?  
  
Four hours later, blissed out and fucked out, the Soldier whips into motion, rising naked from the floor to the window and grabbing his rifle like it never left his hand.  Two shots ring out, and he turns cold eyes on Clint where he’s scrambling for his knives on the floor.  
  
He smirks once more, and disappears with only the gun and his pants in hand.

  
  
Turns out they were after the same guy.  Clint accepts this, makes his report, and doesn’t think too much on it.  They’ve got far too much going on right now, what with, you know, a HYDRA infestation and Project Insight going to pieces and fighting a covert war with everyone on their backs.  The Soldier’s been a free agent (and some would say loose cannon) since the big crash over the river last year, and he’s lucky to have survived his encounter.  
  
He maybe kinda leaves a few details out when he explains to Cap.  ‘For a man dead thirty years, not bad.’  Steve doesn’t find that funny, but accepts that ‘he’s clearly got a list he’s working through, he wasn’t starving and he seemed pretty lucid, if angry.  No, I don’t know anything else.’  
  
That’s all the thought he gives it until late one night he gets finds the same assassin crashed out on his couch, nursing a broken ankle and more than a few other scrapes.  He’s also working his way through the last pack of saltines in the house, and glares up at Clint when he stands at the edge of the room with bow drawn.  
  
“You knocked me up.  You’re gonna help me lay low for a while.”  
  
“I think I woulda noticed-“  
  
“You think this is the only mod they made on me?” the Soldier, nee James Buchanan Barnes, says with a flick of his fingers and a metallic _ting_ off his left bicep.  “Twelve weeks of throwing up every six hours like clockwork, I’m pretty sure _something_ ’s up.”

He stays still, leg still up over the couch’s arm, letting Clint get closer with arrow knocked.  He looks up again, relaxes the Kubrick brow, and suddenly Clint can see just how much like death warmed over he looks.  This man isn’t running.  He _can’t_ , and he’s crashed here trying to find help that probably he won’t find anywhere else.  
  
“You know this is way beyond my pay grade.”  
  
“I know,” he responds quietly.  
  
Clint still has his arrow knocked, but he can also see that the guns are laid out on the coffee table, along with a set of knives he envies, in easy reach but not in hand.  
  
There’s also one of his med-kits, open and ravaged, and _seriously_ , those were his _last pack_ of crackers…  
  
“I can give you a couple minutes to finish wrapping up, but then-“  
  
“Then it’s SHIELD custody. I know.”  The Soldier- Barnes- looks up at him, and exhaustion is plain in every line.  “Least worst option.  The ones who are after me- they’ll force me to abort, turn me back into their pet assassin.  Or worse, they’ll strap me down, cut her out of me and then make a new soldier out of her.”  
  
“Leaving aside the sheer bizzare-ity of what you’re suggesting- ‘her’?”  
  
“I just know, awright?”  The Brooklyn leaking into his hoarse speech twitches Clint’s eyebrow a bit, but the man’s curled in on himself and clearly losing whatever momentum has sustained him this far.  He nudges the coffee table out of arm’s reach, takes a quick look at the ankle- definitely broke, but not unfixable- and then steps away to make the call and wait.  
  
 _Asset has made an appearance, has surrendered, is injured fleeing from HYDRA and wants to make a deal.  Has so far been cooperative.  Claims further modification aside from prosthetic arm, requires full medical work-up._  
  
Clint switches out his bow for a gun and greets the line of armed and armored agents at the door (he doesn’t need to replace that doorjamb, _again_ ).  They leap into action and fill the living room, surrounding the couch where the Soldier still has his bum foot up over the arm, both hands behind his head, and the barest hint of a sickly smile on his face.  Faced down with a circle of SHIELD-issue gun barrels, he opens his mouth and says-  
  
“Sanctuary.  Sanctuary.  Sanctuary.”

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Clint is supposed to debrief, but instead what he does is accompany the whole bizarre procession into SHIELD Medical, where the intake process will start with a full-on search, inside and out.  
  
Look, when a man turns his eyes to you and says ‘Spot me,’ and then just kind of _turns off_ , going dead like a robot in order not to freak out in the lab- it’s just something you do, all right?  
  
So now he’s just watching the same procedures he himself despises, only a lot more thorough and intrusive, and finds himself wondering about what the Soldier had said.  He also finds himself in the position where when the nurse-orderlies ask questions, and the Soldier’s lost in himself or flicks his eyes toward him as if seeking permission, Clint says “Report,” and it works.  It kind of makes him feel sick, though not quite as sick as when all the clothes come off and he can see for himself.  
  
Not just the scars, the bruises, the seriously fucked ankle that’s been semi-set and wrapped.  What was once Captain Rogers’ best friend has been stabbed, shot, possibly burned a couple of times, and generally chewed up over a course of several years.  He’s also got some very neat surgical scars around the inside of his hips and navel, ones that take a certain angle and light to see because they’re that faded, and a distinct paunch that’s incongruous with the rest of his entirely ripped body.  
  
When they get to the internal scans, he’s as floored as any of them, though the med-techs are well-trained, SHIELD-professional types who report clinically as they fiddle with dials and move the wand from place to place.  
  
“-abdominal distention appears to be housing a human fetus, approximately eighteen weeks of development, in what can only be called a sort of ‘free-floating’ uterus…”  
  
…Well.  
  
Well, _shit_.

 

............

 

  
It turns out Zola was just as secretive in his way as Erskine had been with his own formula- and it was also a rare and costly thing to produce.  Better this way, it seemed, the cost of a few cloned organs and some crazy-advanced surgery, the kind that secret labs always seem to have decades before the rest of the medical industry- and when they felt the need to retire their current super-soldier, they could have both genetic and gestational inurement of a new one from scratch.  According to what files were to be had, they’d tried both straight cloning and blood transfusions, neither of which had gotten the results they wanted, and so the next step- when the soldier was no longer needed ready at a moment’s notice- was to try saturation on a gestational level, in the hopes that starting early would get something more than failed blastocysts and transfusion patients who got a temporary boost and then terribly sick.  
  
But Clint doesn’t find all that out until much later, because in between the Soldier turning himself off so deep that he’s basically out like a light while still walking around and getting his ass chewed by Fury and Agent I’m-still-mad-at-you-for-pulling-this-disappearing-crap Coulson, he’s contemplating fatherhood with a brief and panicked flush.

_Suppose it’s not_ that _much different from finding out you left one of the town-girls with a little surprise last year,_ he babbles in his head, if that’s even his, if this is even _real…_

But no.  There’s no blue tinge to tell him that this is a nightmare, no flick of the switch telling him his loyalties are not his own.  It’s just him in a goddamned medical lab, with a man he fucked once and encountered in the field twice and had seen in a goddamned old history special three times when he was a kid.

The med-techs are almost done, the engineers are working on scanning and tapping and stripping down the arm (for bugs, for bombs, for who knows what little surprises), and higher-level agents will be coming soon to act as interrogators.  The Soldier’s- technically they don’t have a positive ID on Barnes yet- right hand is white-knuckled even while he stares blankly up at the ceiling, cuffed to the rails and swarmed by a containment crew.

Clint’s just grazed that hand with his own for a quick squeeze, covering a fellow soldier.  He hears the intake of breath- and then looks up to see Rogers just beyond the med-lab window, in civvies with his hair stuck up wild and a hint of red in the crowd of other heads below his shoulders.

“Keep him down,” he says, and gets up to go deal with this next bit of fresh hell.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

“It seems that the warehouse fire currently being put out was in fact the work of our friend in there,” Coulson says, in the conference room they’ve been hauled into.  Steve is sitting rigidly at attention because otherwise he’d be shredding whatever his hands came upon, ignoring the coffee that Clint is stealing for himself.  It’s been a long night already, and it’s only going to get longer.  
  
“Let me guess-“  
  
“It was full of HYDRA agents,” Natasha supplies.  She’s looking none too fresh herself, but she’s in non-op clothes that look cleaner than the rest of her.  “That’s why it’s been burning for a day and a half, some of the stuff they had there was- enthusiastic.”  
  
Coulson does not look mollified.  “Our records indicate that most sightings in the last year of James Barnes, AKA the Winter Soldier, have involved the destruction of HYDRA bases and safe-houses and the killing of their agents; with occasional forays in what initially appeared to be hits on Russian mafia heavies.  More recently, records indicate that someone using notably untraceable slugs has been using guerilla tactics to stir up various HYDRA nests.  They take out enough agents at a distance to force them into revealing their existence when they come boiling out trying to find the sniper, thus allowing SHIELD or other local authorities to sweep in and clean up.”  
  
“And the warehouse- that’s where he got beat up.”  Rogers does not have as good a neutral face as Coulson, but he’s trying.  It’s the little shake that gives him away.  Clint looks up from his mug, swallows the last of the current cup.  
  
“Cap, I swear by all that’s holy he was like that when he turned up at my place.  I made the call, I’ve been with him since the escort showed up, nothing’s been done but to cuff him and treat him.”  
  
“As of this moment, James Barnes is not listed as an enemy of the state but as a US soldier, MIA,” Coulson states firmly.  “The Winter Soldier has- quite a few kill orders out in the international community, but has offered to cooperate with us and is currently offering no resistance.  He’s had a number done on him,” he says, looking Steve in the eye.  “Including further unethical experiments. It may-”  
  
“I have to see him.”  
  
“That may not be the best thing for either of you at the moment. Our psych eval team-“  
  
“He’s been fightin’ the good fight for the last six months, jeez, Coulson,” Clint finally interrupts, massaging his temples.  “If he wanted to knock out Steve, he coulda done that at any time. Let the man see his best, _back from the dead_ bud…”

The room goes very quiet.  
  
Phil folds his hands, and finally nods.  
  
“Captain, Agent Romanov.  Go keep an eye on the situation.  There will be close monitoring of everything that goes on, so bear that in mind.”  Steve almost knocks the table askew in his haste to remove himself, and Natasha follows at a steady clip.  Clint takes a moment to glance mournfully at the coffee, then heaves himself upright.  
  
“Not you, Barton.”  
  
He knows where this is going.  Words like ‘sleeping with the enemy’ and ‘dereliction of duty’ are going to be thrown around, along with gems like ‘misplaced trust’ and the dreaded, hated- ‘compromised.’  
  
 _Come on, mashy spike-plate…_   Clint turns his rise into a stretch, and scratches at his neck.  
  
“Paperwork?”  
  
“Paperwork.  And a proper debrief.  And a review of your debrief from five months ago.  And when you’re done with me, Director Fury will probably want a word…”  
  
 _Hurry up, mashy spike-plate…_  
  
“You know… the last time something like this happened, we got Black Widow, sir.”  
  
“Don’t get cute.  Your propensity for making promises that SHIELD must then deliver on has been noted.”  Phil gathers up his paperwork, shuffling through files and occasionally pulling out stapled sheets.  There’s starting to be a neat little pile formed up.  
  
“And you’ve gained how many good operatives that way?  I think I’m two for two, sir.  Oh wait- I was one of _your_ strays.”  
  
“And I paid my dues for it in paper, ink and blood.  Hop to it, Barton.”  
  
Clint bows his head with a sigh, and grabs a pen, starting to initial away.   
  
“Phil- don’t cut me out of this.  I’ll jump through the hoops, I’ll do the milk runs, submit to psych, pay whatever price you want- but I made a promise,” he says, and retroactively swears it blind.  “There’s a kid involved, and I made a promise.  No more little toy soldiers.  You know Nat would agree.”  
  
“Noted, Agent Barton."

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

All that running and sniping and warehouse-blazing must have caught up with Barnes, because by the time Clint’s done being peeled by those few privileged to know just how bad he fucked up, he’s been out for about eighteen hours and doesn’t look like he’s coming up anytime soon.  Natasha reports that it’s just exhaustion.  She and Steve have been taking it in shifts to watch while Barnes is sleeping, both to have a high level agent and a soothing presence for a ragged-edged, deadly soldier when he awakes.  Clint nods, grabs another cup of coffee, and takes his turn.  
  
“Clint,” Nat says as she sets a hand on his arm.  “Don’t screw this up.”  
  
“Does _everybody_ freakin’ know?”  
  
Nat stares at him.  
  
“Okay, fair point. What can I say, it was professional admiration.”  
  
“Just _try_ to handle it with something like decorum. You know how it’s been.”

 

Barnes wakes up in the wee hours.  His good hand goes first to his belly and then for a weapon, his eyes wild- and then it clamps over his mouth.  A basin appears in front of him, and he heaves bile into it, praying to whatever gods are left to him.  
  
When he’s done he sags back into the bed, staring first at the bracelet on his right wrist, the stroke-slow reaction of his left, and comes out of the rest of his fog to the low, soothing babble of the archer seated off to the side.  
  
“Hey.  It’s 2015, New York.  You’re safe.  No one’s gonna hurt you.  You’ve got a lot of talking to do with a lot of boring people, but it’ll be fine…”  
  
He looks around the room, the dim lights, beeping monitors and clear glass at the end of the room.  Guards in the halls and, a nurse’s station in view.  
  
“…precautions but no chains, no drugs.  You’re safe.  Hi, I’m Clint,” the archer says, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Figured we ought to get to know each other, considering…” he trails off, with a jerk of his chin.  
  
There’s no place else to look, and Barnes’ hand goes to his abdomen again, pressing through the papery sheet he’s wearing.  He starts to respond, then pauses.  
  
There’s a pair of undone handcuffs in his lap.  
  
“..yeah. Considering.”  
  
It’s quiet a little longer, and Clint is tapping his fingers on his thigh before he finally speaks up.  
  
“Look, there’s about to be a whole lot of questions for you, by docs and suits and SHIELD brass, and I wanna get a couple things straight.  No one is taking away your baby.  Zip.  Done.  The docs are gonna want to put you on bed rest for the rest of your life, but that’s what they do.  
  
“I’m gonna let you in on a couple things, because I’ll be in the dog-house either way and you’re owed them.  First- you’ve been doing SHIELD a solid these last six months, don’t let ’em forget that.  If Coulson thought you were responsible for civilian casualties since defecting you’d be in a five-point right now.  Two- you’ve been dancing to the tune of bad men for a long time.  I know what that’s like.  You’re not the only one here who’s got bad shit to make up for.  Three- once upon a time, you were Cap’s best friend, and he’s still fucking bonkers for you.  That’s going to count for something.”  
  
Barnes looks at him with a long and considering glance, then nods once and settles back into his usual gargoyle-hunch.  The cuffs snap on again, and Clint directs him to the post they ought to be on.  
  
“It’s like half an hour until Steve gets here-“  
  
But of course, Steve is a really punctual guy and in fact likes leaving extra room for getting places early, and it’s his freaking best friend come back to life.  So he appears at the end of the hall, and it’s kind of like watching some sun-starved thing turn its face toward the dawn.  
  
Clint stands up, grabs his empty coffee and heads to the door as the changing of the guard filters in.  He nods in passing, lost in the crowd of security, psych eval and the like.  Steve barely notices, and who can blame him?  
  
He gets halfway down the hall and pitches his cup.  Two points.  
  
  
Sometimes, Clint hates being the good guy.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

His expectations are met when he’s immediately thrown down the long dark hole of punishment detail.  Clint Barton has made a hash of things and he knows it, and had the gall to ask for favors on top- so in order to regain some of his credibility, he’s doing everything from obnoxiously petty observational stuff to a couple of salt-the-earth’s that normally wouldn’t be right on top of each other.  Come up for air?  He’s barely had time to sleep, and he’s riding that fine line between keeping the blues away and having those moments where he wonders what his next divine order will be because the sheer relentlessness of pace is so similar.  
  
Which is why he’s bleary-eyed and incoherent when Steve Rogers, in full-on Captain America mode, comes to his door and says “We need to talk.”  
  
“…szfl?”  Smooth, Barton.  
  
When the moment passes and he does not receive the arm-bar to the neck he’s been expecting, he looks up again.  Steve’s still there in his doorway, looking uncomfortable and sad and kind of wrecked.  Clint invites him in with a jerk of his head, and prays for coffee.  
  
“So how’s things?”  
  
“I get that they’re putting you through your paces for having screwed around on an op- and believe me, I’d be a lot more unhappy if I hadn’t heard from Bucky that it was something he and you wanted-“  
  
“Hey, to be fair, I think neither of us was really expecting that result.  Also, he was the one tearing clothes off.”  
  
“-But I need your help.”  And Steve’s been burning the midnight oil too, or at least he’s been running on all burners and it’s wearing on his face.  “I’ve been helping Bucky the best I can, but you’re the one who brought him in, who got him to trust you beyond just- being desperate.  You’ve got a rapport.  I know what it’s like to have _let_ other people make bad decisions for me- you know what it’s like to have been _forced_ to.  I’m trying to keep up, with that and with the- baby, and it’s just- it’s too much.  I’ll put in the word for you with SHIELD, but I _need your help_ , Clint.”  
  
And that’s how he ends up moving in to Stark Tower.

 

Barnes has had more than a couple weeks to recover since the last time Clint saw him.  The ankle’s not hobbling him much, the scrapes and singes are long gone, and as for the whole mad-science cloned-womb thing- he’s definitely looking a bit fuller, under the black t-shirt and sweats.  They’ve still got him wearing the bracelet, but it looks like his metal arm’s back to normal reaction times.  Someone’s taken a buffing brush to the remains of the red star, cleaning up the scouring-pad scratches Clint remembers from the last time he saw it this close.  
  
He looks like he’s bitten something sour.  
  
Clint offers up a packet of crackers and gets a bitten-off laugh.  
  
“That’s worn off.  Also they have this thing called Dramamine now, it’s fantastic.”  Sarcasm suits him, and it’s not just the eternal sleep-dep that has Clint comparing that voice to bitter coffee.  
  
“You seem better.”  
  
“I was putting my pieces together for a year before we met.  They’re not nearly all there yet, and the dreams are bad, but…”  The serum adds a certain amount of resilience to both the body and by extent, the human psyche.  There was a reason why they had to _keep_ wiping him, put him on ice between missions- the same reason he survived the violent rewrites in anything like usable conditions in the first place.  
  
Forgetting may be a luxury he longs for, but he has a shaky foundation built and he’s shoring it up more every day.  
  
The dark-haired man rolls one shoulder in grudging invitation, and they move to one of Stark’s living rooms, because apparently one per floor is not enough.  By rights Barnes should be flat on his back with monitors hooked up to his everything, but apparently between the surgeries and the serum he’s stable enough to walk around without courting medical disaster.  
  
Steve is in evidence but at a distance, doing something in the kitchen or in another room.  
  
Clint sits down across the coffee table, taking in the light from the windows, and thinks they look like an attempted murder of crows.  
  
“So you may have figured out I’m a trashy ex-carnie who jumps off buildings for a living.  I don’t have a lot to offer a kid.”  
  
“Bull.  Steve keeps me briefed- you’ve been working like a dog to pay for me not being in a cage.  That’s something.”  
  
“Something, all right.  I’ve also had a god in my head and it sounds like between the three of us, no one’s ever gonna sleep through the night even if there was no baby.”  Barnes curls his arms around himself at that, and Clint follows the motion, metal and calloused fingers pressed against his stomach.  
  
“They asked about that a lot.  I had to tell them how it happened, what I remembered- which was not much until far too late.  I only found the files on the- modifications a few months ago, after I started getting _real_ reason to raid their archives and ask questions again.  After the first few and what I could get out of them, it started out just killing them all, to make sure none of them would ever see the light of day again…”  
  
Cheery thought.  Clint puts his feet up on the coffee table.  
  
“How’s ‘she’?”  
  
“Still kicking.  Literally.  Jumping jacks may not be far behind.”  Bucky huffs and joins him in desecrating Stark’s furniture.  Clint decides he’s jealous, because even six months pregnant he’s got better calves.  
  
“They think she might have the serum.”  
  
“What, seriously?”  The soldier’s fingers are hypnotic, rubbing little circles in a nervous motion while the rest of him is eerily still.  
  
“The science bears it out.  Looks like they had the right idea.  Make little super-soldiers- I suppose I’m lucky they needed me too much to test out the equipment.  Too bad I wasn’t ‘need to know’ about it.”  
  
Clint sits forward, elbows on knees.  Barnes locks eyes with him, curls up one side of his mouth.  
  
“It’ll be okay.  Something I learned in the hunt, that’s served me pretty well- James Buchanan Barnes could be a selfish bastard when he wanted to be.  Couldn’t control your toy long enough to try out all its functions?  Too bad.  They’re mine now.”  And the bared teeth are something like a smile, enough for the likes of them.  “My arm.  My crazy.  My kid.”

Clint lays a hand down on the table between them.  
  
“Ours.  Nobody is going to make our kid into us. Between you, me and Cap- anyone who tries it is gonna wish they hadn’t.”  
  
  
…………  
  
  
He can hear Rogers moving in the background, catches movement out of the corner of his eye, keeping a minimum of one room between them and himself.  The minute they hear a door shut, the sour look on Barnes’ face comes back.  
  
“You’d tell me if this disgusted you, right?” he says, waving his hand toward his left arm and gently distended stomach.  
  
Clint throws up his hands.  
  
“Fuck this, not drunk enough.  Are you actually asking me, or just bitching?”  
  
Bucky Barnes actually bursts out laughing, rich and rolling and bitter.  “See?  This is why I want you.  You actually talk _back_.  Not around.  Not dancin’ around like a priest in the confessional.  He’s tryin’, lord knows he’s tryin’- but it still comes out god-damned _pity_ ,” he snarls.  “Forgives me rivers of blood on my hands, but try and make something good out of it all-“  
  
“Whoa there, dead-eye.  Sounds like the honeymoon’s over-“  Okay, now the laughter’s starting to sound crazed, and Clint’s relieved when (his ex? Brief fling? Wishful thinking?) finally forces it down with a cough, shifting uncomfortably after.  
  
“Just tell me one thing.  No guns, no death-defying danger, no contrived stuck-in-a-foxhole crap.  Take me as I am?”  
  
“Like, have-and-hold or like _take_ -take?  Are these options?”  Shit, he hadn’t meant to let that out-  
  
“Like we take it into the next room and you fuck me like I just stole your kill again.”  
  
Clint freezes.  
  
“Now hey, Steve-“  
  
“Brought you here to handle what he couldn’t.  You up for that?”  His eyes are ice-blue, dark and deadly serious, with a hint of amusement- and more than a little desperation behind it.  
  
There are so many reasons he shouldn’t.  This is like sacrilege, coming between these two.  
  
The ceiling goes _“Ahem,”_ and both of them jump.  
  
 _“Greetings, Agent Barton, Sergeant Barnes.  I am instructed by one Captain Rogers to deliver a message, which reads as follows.”_  
  
The dulcet strains of Alan Menken filter through the air.  Clint drops his burning face into his hands, somewhere between a cackle and a sob.  
  
“Okay.  Okay, I can- take a hint.  Okay…” he trails off, as Sebastian the Crab begins to croon _kiss the girl_.  Hauling to his feet, he offers an arm to Barnes.  
  
“Oh thank _Christ_ ,” says Bucky.  
  
  
…………  
  
  
In the sweaty silence that follows, Barnes turns over, resting his metal arm across his stomach.  
  
“Think you could explain to Rogers that just because these things were forced on me, doesn’t mean I’m not claiming them for mine now?”  
  
“Haven’t you got like, five therapists between you?  Why am I suddenly your marriage counselor?  Slash surrogate?”  
  
Barnes looks at him through straggled black hair.  
  
“Because you _know_.  And because if we’re gonna get this done, for her-” he’ll accept a light caress, as long as he can see the hand coming when it’s placed on his abdomen.  “-then we’ve all gotta be reading from the same page.”  
  
Mutual understanding of each other’s specific brand of hurt, where the pros could only observe and offer strategy, having never lived the nightmare.  He gets it.  
  
“Also- I may have nights made of crazy and be off my feet for the rest of it, but I’m not a fucking delicate flower.  I won’t break if he breathes on me.”  
  
“Seriously, _five therapists…_ ” Clint groans from underneath the pillow.  
  
  
…………  
  
  
When he comes out to find a platter of sandwiches waiting in the kitchen, Clint knows he’s been had.  
  
They’re still delicious.

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

After that, Barton crashes for about a day.  When he wakes up, it’s to catch up on what he’s missed in the last month and a half of being on the go for SHIELD, and to try and figure out what they need to do for their future.  
  
Too many people know about Barnes to hope with any certainty that HYDRA doesn’t know, or can’t find out eventually.  There’s been a hell of a purge, and Clint wants to be in a position where he can trust the backing of his organization absolutely- but even as a kid, he was never that naïve.  After the blow-up over the Potomac?  
  
He trusts Natasha.  He trusts Steve and Tony to follow their guts and Bruce to act on his best intentions.  He trusts Barnes to act with all his tattered scraps of rage and cunning to protect what he’s used to haul himself out of the depths.  
  
He trusts Coulson to be a company man, and Fury to sacrifice what he thinks will bring the best results.  
  
So.  He calls Nat in and starts laying out contingencies.  
  
(He’s never kept his money all in one place, and it helps now.  Setting up caches are nothing he hasn’t done before, and safe-houses, emergency contacts.  He could tap Stark, but– first start with what you know you have.)  
  
  
…………  
  
  
Natasha’s opinion is thus.  
  
“Oh my god, Steve- your boyfriend is pissed at you so you give him Barton for a teddy bear?  Smooth, Rogers.”  
  
“It’s a living,” Clint pipes up from the couch.  He’s working Barnes’ neck as gently as possible for a mess of knots around cybernetically-enhanced whatsits- as one of the extremely few people to gain casual permission to touch, he gets all that comes with it, including being the go-to guy for some pretty harsh physical tension.  
  
Steve is in polite exile on the other couch.  The magnets may have reversed polarity, Clint thinks, but the pull is still there, even if it’s push now.  Rogers is concentrating on the sketch/note pad in his hands, tapping his pen occasionally- he looked sheepish when Nat first stepped in, but now it’s all business.  
  
“We need to get our plans together.  The simplest solution can be boiled down to ‘destroy HYDRA’- but we all know that doesn’t cover it.”  
  
Barnes snorts softly, mouth in a wry twist.  He was well on his way to pulling a one-man takedown before the last injury, and he’d still be out there if it weren’t for- well.  Plans change.  
  
Natasha considers things.  
  
“What are your goals?”  
  
“No labs,” is Bucky’s response, immediate and dead flat.  “No experiments.  Someone to take care of her.  No _weapons_.”  
  
“No more little toy soldiers.  We don’t want our girl turned into one of us- or some kind of lab culture for what serum they can get.  No matter who’s looking, Nat,” Clint says, pressing his thumbs into a tendon.  Barnes swallows, and something finally gives.  “Kid gets to grow up the way she wants to be.”  
  
“She’ll still need to be trained- control her strength, and a good education.  Even if she never shows serum effects,” Steve counters.  “People will still make her a target.”  
  
Nat’s got that look, where she’s taking notes without anything so crass as paper.  She’s also looking at them with her arms folded, like they’re equal parts the sweetest and saddest things she’s ever witnessed.  
  
“You’re going to need medical care, schools- it’s good to have alternatives, but I think you should consider letting Coulson assist you.  You haven’t been back to medical since they let you out, and I get that- but you can’t just sit back and hope for the best, and the only way you’re getting her out is with surgery.”  
  
Bucky’s jaw clenches and Clint feels all the work he just did turn to rocks under his fingertips.  
  
“If you’re going to do this- you’re not just taking on a mission, you’re becoming _parents_ ,” Nat says, eyeing then.  “Your kid’s going to need more than just guard dogs and a wall a thousand feet high.”  
  
“We’ll try that for a _start,_ ” Bucky growls.

 

…………

  
  
It turns out that one of the snags is a legal existence of some kind, since with Barnes prettymuch a ghost in the public system and the whole tabloid thing they’re trying hard to avoid, there’s not a lot to prevent someone from saying, what the hell is a child doing with this pack of clowns?  And if someone does- that leaves disappearing, or letting the foster system step in, and as a veteran of both Clint is _damned_ if he’s going to let that be the first option.  
  
Bucky can be charming when he needs to be but he’s still not up on dealing with a lot of people- and letting Cap make the ask on this?  He’d turn red as a fireplug and stutter.  
  
Let it never be said that Clint Barton didn’t do amazing things for love.  
  
  
…………  
  
  
“You’re asking me- to be a surrogate.”  
  
Darcy Lewis has weaponized eyebrows, and she employs them to devastating effect over the top of the ungodly coffee creation he’s brought as an offering.  
  
“I’m asking you to lend your name to some paperwork, and to be very pissed off and defensive if anyone asks.  Which nobody should. But if they do- you’ve given up custody to that jackass and gotten on with your life.”  
  
Miss Lewis is a poli-sci graduate who full-time wrangles for a woman teetering on the edge of applied astro-physics.  She’s also a spitfire who’s keeping up with a large and humorless organization breathing down her neck and Tony Stark sweeping in and ‘helping’.  She manages to annoy the hell out of people on multiple levels of security while never once actually- or at least not getting caught explicitly- violating protocol.  
  
“Why me?”  
  
“You’ve got the look, and you know how important secrecy is for us.  I’ll take full responsibility, you won’t even have to be an emergency contact if you don’t want to.  We just- need your name, to give to someone who doesn’t have one of their own.”  
  
Darcy gives him about the longest look he’s ever gotten from her without some kind of snappy remark.  
  
“…Let me meet who I’m covering for.”

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

“I was honestly expecting this to be some kind of practical joke.  Barton, are you feeling all right?  You’re slipping.”  
  
“No joke, Darce. Serious as the plague.”  
  
He’d felt the clutch of terror watching two surprised and suspicious brunettes circling each other, hoping to God he hadn’t made the biggest mistake of his life.  The meeting had been salvaged, however, by homemade brownies brought by Darcy, quote- “In case there was an actual pregnant lady involved, and not just some bizarre government test-tube project.”   
  
Now Barnes and she are standing in the kitchen of Steve’s floor, still eyeing each other but with much better grace now that carbs and sugar have been passed around.  Clint’s managed to snitch _one_ , and his fingers are still stinging from the spoon.  And now he’s just terrified by the thought of them getting _along_.  
  
“So my first thought was ‘what do you need me for?’, because I'm pretty sure I've heard of trans-dads before,” Lewis breezes through, while Bucky leans against the counter with one arm (metal) folded across his body, the other steadily making inroads on the chocolate-heaped platter.  “Buuuut with the arm, I realize that’s kind of silly.  You’re the guy from DC, Cap’s secret squeeze.  It’s more about the legally dead thing, isn’t it.”  
  
“And tabloids.  And possible kidnapping attempts,” Clint fills in.  
  
“Uh-huh.  Reassuring.”  
  
“Ah… touch of mad science, actually, not-”  
  
“Shush it, Barton, let Sergeant Hot Stuff speak for himself.”  
  
Barnes is grinning around his third brownie, eyes crinkled.   
  
“Whatta you want me to say, doll?”  
  
Oh dear.  
  
 _Next thing you know, the house is on fire…_  
  
Darcy’s been briefed about dealing with touchy mostly-stable people of a certain training. She can totally handle this interview.  
  
  
When Clint comes back from his hasty retreat (he’s heard neither screams nor silence, so that’s… something?  The floor plan’s big and open, fantastic sight-lines in case of anything) the two of them are seated together, and there’s almost no brownies left.  Milk’s almost done, too.  Barnes and Lewis look up as one, and while the smirks aren’t _evil_ , they’re not reassuring either.  
  
“So, we’ve come to the conclusion that for purely narcissistic reasons, I can totally double for James Barnes here.  But,” Darcy says, sobering at him.   
  
“But…?”  
  
“You’re still asking for something really big from me, guys.  I mean, not just my reputation in the line of fire, once my name is on that line I could, if the worst should happen, actually be called upon to be responsible for a small person.  You all live high-risk lives, there is a definite, non-zero chance of stuff going down that travels down the list of next-of-kin.  At which point I’m caught scrambling to find a nice pack of wolves to raise Jellybean, here,” she says, and places her hand on Bucky’s pronounced belly, which he accepts without complaint.   
  
“Unless there’s DNA matching involved, in which case I’m down for fraud.”  
  
“We can- finesse the database on that.”  _Channel your inner Coulson… crap, it’s not working._  
  
“Really?  Great, I always wanted to be party to- anyway.  Look, the thing is, before I say ‘yes’ to this, you’ve got to promise, all of you who’re in on the parenting pact.  You need to all do your damnedest to come home alive, because I’m not ready to be a mom yet.  And wrangle the same from Steve, because even without the super-secret gossip that I totally do not weasel out of folks who should know better- that guy pulls sacrifice plays more often than Jesus.  Trust me, Captain America will make a better foster parent than one Darcy Lewis, barring emergency.”  
  
Bucky looks to Clint, brows knit.  
  
“We’ll- have that talk.  But meanwhile- tentative yes?”  
  
“So long as I get to be the cool aunt.”  Darcy gets up, starts clearing away the platter she brought.  “If you boys can get your act together and not all die on me, then yes, I can lend you my name.  Don’t wear it out,” she says with a smile, and Barnes returns it with a little wave.  
  
“We’ll schedule that throwing lesson later, Buck.  I’ll let you guys get back to this crazy shonen soap-opera of yours.”  
  
“See ya ‘round, doll.”

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

That’s one thing down, a million to go.  There’s a lot of work to this ‘family’ business, especially when you’re in the world security business already. But they’re trying.  
  
Lord knows, they’re trying hard.  
  
True to his word, Coulson has not cut Clint out of things- but that doesn’t mean he’s got it free and easy.  Barnes has a reprieve from anything but medical and psych eval until further notice- he’s filled in SHIELD on everything he remembered, everything he hauled out of burning HYDRA bases and read, hid or destroyed.  They want to keep him happy so that eventually, he might just be willing to serve in harness (and parental leave is hardly the worst or weirdest concession that has been made in the name of securing an asset).   
  
Clint is the one who’s tasked with getting him into and out of medical without anyone being perforated.   
  
(This is equal parts easier and harder than one might think.  Easy because Barnes has that ‘turning off’ trick down to a science, and hard because Clint is never, ever going to be okay with it.  The hell he did to deserve this kind of trust, he doesn’t know.)  
  
Stark’s been happy to front them all guest-space, since after the Battle of New York and his own personal fights, he’s a little more willing to surround himself with a team of like-minded and like-skilled people.  Barnes doesn’t leave the building, barely leaves Steve’s floor- paranoia and practicality dictate that they treat it like the actual old-school sanctuary, because setting foot outside is asking for trouble.  Stark has all the toys they need, and SHIELD sends its minions to the accorded neutral office floor for their appointments- if something were to go wrong, someone to infiltrate, it would be in a friendly place of power, the best they’re going to get.  
  
Things are- as okay as they really can be.   
  
Stir-crazy is held off by the changing rota of Avengers through the communal space, the super-limited list keeping it within appropriate security parameters.  When Barnes is up for company- and not every day is as awesome as the one where Darcy came by- there’s plenty of stimulation to be had. It’s a damn shame the world’s off-limits, but needs-must, and a floor of the tower is still bigger than a cryo-coffin by Clint’s reckoning.  
  
Their nights can be rough.  Someone’s always up wandering or watching or trying very hard not to hold vigil at two in the morning, when blood or blue or ice comes creeping, and maybe it’s just Clint but with October, he feels like the sheer number of hungry ghosts walking behind them gets bigger.  Most of the time, he’s more than happy to engage in some enthusiastic reclamation of the flesh with Bucky- it helps burn out the nightmares, or at least keep them small and manageable.  Some evenings, it’s the private elevator down to the range to keep in practice (one night, he even drags out a pair of atlatls for them to fool around with).   
  
Others, they just sit up and watch TV for a while, or at least Bucky pretends to watch and Clint noodles around on his phone (JARVIS’s educational primers on expecting and rearing offspring are for daylight- the wee hours are for terrible movies that nobody really pays attention to).  Rogers is down in the gym tonight, not a nightmare but he just needs to fill his hours in order to sleep properly these days.  
  
“You know, we still need to have that talk with Steve.”

Bucky’s jaw clenches, and he glares past the screen.  Clint didn’t know it was possible to aggressively cradle something, but that’s what he’s doing, hunched around his belly.  
  
Steve’s with them often enough, at meals and around the place when he’s not on assignment, but _with_ is another story.  It’s still that same old reverse-magnet thing Clint is seeing, pushing apart while still needing to be together, and it _sucks_.  Clint’s happy to be having regular hot sex with a guy who can match him, who _knows_ , but watching the two of them, made for each other, quietly suffering from across a chasm?   
  
Getting a little old.  
  
“Okay.  You two are getting to be a pain in my head, and since this is what I got pulled in for, I say we’re talking about it,” he says, giving up on Angry Birds and the boomerang toucans for the night.  _taptaptap_  
  
Barnes has that bitter look to him again, the stuff that lets him look back at the world and dare it to blink first, because he’s seen worse.  It’s a hell of a smokescreen, that.  
  
“We really doing this?  Now?”  
  
“You see a better time?  Come on, you said you liked me for my back-talk.”  
  
“Even the SHIELD shrinks know there’s some things that can wait.  That need to wait.”  
  
Glaring, but not agitated- normal color, pissed not panicked.   
  
“What, until after the baby’s born?  I don’t know what’s between you two, but at first you looked at him like he was dawn after the Antarctic winter.  Now you can’t stand the sight of each other, but you still smile whenever someone calls you two a couple.  Speaking as your substitutional teddy-bear, I say.  The.  Fuck?”  
  
“It’s not the sight.  It’s the touch.”  
  
Oh.  
  
 _Oh._  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“I asked you if this disgusted you, remember? And _you_ didn’t flinch.”  
  
“I… suppose this is the wrong time to say I grew up in a circus?”  
  
“And _he_ grew up with _me_.  And I’m not- I’m nothing like what I was, and I really, really don’t need this right now.”  Now Barnes is burying his face in one hand, metal cold against flushed and miserable skin.  “I’m holding, but I’m holding with spit and baling wire, Barton.  And the center _has_ to hold.”  
  
“And you don’t trust him to shore you up?”  
  
“ _Fuck_ you, Barton- he’d do whatever the hell he had to for me.  I just can’t trust it isn’t _pity_ ,” and he’s snarling again.  “And I’ll take fire, frost and fucking time in a _cage_ before I’ll take _pity_.  Not right now.  Not from him.”  
  
“Now hold on.  We are talking about the same guy, right?”  
  
It’s a long, ugly moment where Barnes is forcing himself to breathe slower, and the snarl becomes a sigh.  
  
“…it’s not that he wouldn’t.  It’s that I look in his eyes and I see something that I’m not anymore.  I can’t let him pity me because I’ll _break_.  He knows who I was, better than I know myself these days.  I’m beyond a mess, Barton.  I’m less than a broken tool and more than I ever thought I’d be again after I got out.  I’m not the man he knew- even if James Barnes is a _part_ of what I am now.  I’ve been called Bucky, I’ve been called the Winter Soldier, and I’m a soldier and a killer and a city boy and a freak and I’m about to be a father.  I’ve been patching the holes the best I can ever since I got the chance to walk away, and it’s like he doesn’t see anything but my crappy darning.  I _walked out of hell_ for him-“  
  
“…when you felt like you still belonged there.”  
  
Barnes sags back into the couch, looking at him with tired eyes.   
  
“Pretty sure I still do.  But when Steve looks at me, it’s like that’s not even a question.  And that’s where all this comes from.”  It’s not the full-body cradle, but his arms are wrapped very firmly around his stomach.  Clint doesn’t touch, doesn’t rise to embrace, but sets his hand out on the table again, there if Bucky wants it.  
  
“They screwed with my head, I took it back when I could.  They made me a killer, but now I kill them.  They changed my body, and I’m letting it stand because it’s useful to me.  The arm lets me fight.  The strength lets me fight.  The organs- I’m not a woman, but I want this baby.  It’s nothing I would ever have expected, or asked for, but she’s my hope.  And I’m pretty sure that’s why he can’t-“  
  
“Can’t let you keep thinking that. Not a minute more.”

Steve’s coming in from the hall, still sweat-sheened, phone getting tucked in the back pocket of his workout-pants.  
  
(Its last text message, dated about an elevator-ride ago, reads, _get your ass up here, and wear your sneaky shoes._ )  
  
Barnes is like a deer in the headlights, and Rogers holds steady for a moment, then starts to move slowly forward.  His voice is low and soothing and deadly earnest.  
  
“Buck- seventy years ago, I thought I would never get to see you alive again.  Two years ago, I never thought I’d see you out of a jail-cell.  Two months ago, seeing you _smile_ would have been a miracle from God.  I’ve been angry and scared about what they did to you- _all_ of it- and I’m sorry I couldn’t get past it enough to make you understand that I’m here for you.  However you want me to be, even if it’s far away.”  
  
Rogers is right between them, an arm’s length away from Barnes and the focus of his whole world, swallowing against tears.  
  
“-and even if it’s right here.”   
  
Clint waits, takes the moment, and slips away.  He can still hear from a distance, and give the lovers the privacy they need to hash things out.  
  
There’s silence from Barnes, and Clint is straining to hear.  
  
“It seemed like I was hurting you when I was around, you were that unhappy.  Cat in a roomful of rocking chairs.  So I stood back, and didn’t say anything, and you seemed to relax.  Can we agree that we’re both scared, and work from there?”  
  
Barnes is speaking, low and urgent, and not quite loud enough for Clint to make it out.  Steve murmurs back, and the floor creaks when he kneels.  
  
“No, it’s not easy to accept, but that’s my problem.  You seem to be doing a lot better, and I’m not gonna argue with anyone or anything that makes you happy.  And I think you’re going to be a hell of a dad.”  
  
Bucky’s voice is thick as he answers.   
  
“You fucking jerk.”  
  
A muffled _thump_ describes the impact of forehead on shoulder, a rustling slide the sweep of hands down a back.  
  
“I love you too.”

  
Well. That’s that, then.

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

Their days are better.  
  
“I am not saddling our daughter with a name like Frances.”  
  
Moderately.  
  
It’s that joyful stretch of purgatory known as ‘the holidays’, and Clint Barton is partnering with Steve Rogers in order to try and keep their _very_ pregnant assassin boyfriend happy.  It’s not working very well.   
  
“Hey, it was good enough for you, wasn’t it?” Bucky’s taking their insistence on him staying off his feet with decent grace, but makes up for it by running his mouth while Steve and Clint are working on the preparations for the big late-Thanksgiving feast upstairs.  At least when he’s in full smartass-mode, the ghosts are mostly at bay.  
  
“And if I recall, parent-pact rule number three is ‘better than we had it’ and that includes names.  If we’re doing the naming-after thing, at least let’s go for some of our girl-relatives, okay?”  
  
It’s been a long day already.  There had been a doctor’s appointment, and they all knew, Barnes included, that he couldn’t just keep going under to handle being poked and prodded and monitored, not if he was going to be with it when things finally came to a head.  The doc had been understanding, and exceedingly careful to explain what she was doing and why, calm and caring and ready to pause for meditative breathing when Bucky’s heart-rate skyrocketed.  She’d even managed to suggest a few changes of environs that would be less clinical, and how certain monitoring functions could be turned over, if desired, to the AI with the biometrics quietly running the building (even if J was usually silent below floor 82).  
  
Still, it had taken quite a few soft repetitions from Clint of _‘you’re safe, you’re here, it’s okay’_ to prevent what could have been very bad for everyone in the room.  
  
Now they’re working on stuffing to bring up to the communal level- Steve’s taken over the kitchen with trays of chopped vegetables for oven-roasting, while the two of them are at their dining table, shredding stale bread loaves and arguing over naming conventions.  
  
“I still say you’re worryin’ too much.  And considering I’m the one getting kicked in the ribs all day, that’s saying something.”  
  
“Well we can’t just keep calling her Jellybean!”  
  
“Why not?  Short, sweet and to the point,” Barnes teases, holding a loaf in one hand and tearing off neat, even hunks with his metal thumb and forefinger.  “Just so long as Stark’s kid doesn’t start up again.”  
  
There had been exactly one instance of Tony trying to extrapolate from Darcy’s nickname for their baby-in-potentia to calling Bucky ‘Jelly-Belly’.  _Once_.  The three of them had turned on him as one and stared him out of the room.   
  
Tony had not repeated the attempt.  
  
It’s quiet for a little bit, save for the crunch of dry crust.   
  
“You know, you don’t have to go if you really don’t want to.”  
  
“Nah, I’m okay with seeing more of the gang.”  Crunch, crackle, snap.  “I just don’t want to be the freak on display.”   
  
“Hon, you’re part of the Avengers now.  We’re all oddballs on parade, you’re just pregnant- which admittedly makes people think they can get handsy. Except I’ve briefed everyone in forcible terms (with added threat of Cap’s disappointed face), and anyone who says anything can get a cushion in the teeth.”  
  
“He’s right, I gave samples and everything,” Steve calls from the kitchen, where he’s switching out trays from the racks in an oven-mitted marathon.  
  
Barnes gives that little smile, the one that’s tired and sweet and an echo of what reeled him in in the first place.  
  
“Always lookin’ out for me.”  
  
Buck reaches out for Clint’s hand, fingers twining, calluses scraping together and it’s- nice.  He knows Barnes is getting what he needs from Rogers now, and that’s why he pulls loose after a second, offering up a smile in lieu as he turns his attention back to the bread-shredding.  
  
He’s looking very much down, because the disappointment on Barnes’s face isn’t something he can see.  
  
............

 

Holidays means more guests, more people to talk to (while still on the short ‘safe’ list), and it’s not like Bucky’s getting any less visibly pregnant.  He usually prefers to stay shut away, safe in their own little world, where he doesn’t have to answer uncomfortable questions or look Stark’s kid in the eye.  And while his childhood memories are still spotty, there’s apparently enough of a difference that the modern version of holiday cheer is another vehicle for homesickness and confusion (though honestly, Buck’s handling that better than Steve, who sometimes gets this look on his face when he’s watching the TV and then vehemently bakes cookies).  
  
Still, every so often they have to show up in the communal floor, if only for the extravagant food and because Clint at least needs to switch up the faces he looks at once in a while.  Even cautious Bucky perks up when he smells what’s coming from the kitchen, and joins them for a brief investigation as they drop off the ungodly amounts of stuffing.  
  
(“These are all the people who are going to know our kid while she’s growing up, you have to see them some time.”)  
  
It’s not that bad, really.  The hunt for HYDRA is in research-mode at the moment, nothing is exploding that requires anyone to drop what they’re doing and go shoot things, and the view of early snow gently drifting down onto New York is actually kinda gorgeous, at least from this high up.   
  
Barnes claims a couch with practiced ease- he’s just about too pregnant to move these days, even with a month to go, and it affords him a good view of the place.  Darcy drifts on through and immediately gloms on to him with a grin, bringing hors d’oeuvres and gossip and getting a free feel of Jellybean kicking.  Nat slips in for a quick talk as well- words and glances pass between them in a quick, coded exchange that Clint recognizes for how she and he communicate on ops, and in the end, she gets tummy-touching privileges as well.   
  
He can hear the exchange in Russian, but not precisely what’s said, and it ends with Natasha humming a lullaby that Bucky picks up after one or two verses.  
  
Meanwhile there’s laughter and arguing from the kitchen, JARVIS making dry commentary about letting the lab-bots set the table, and Steve’s face when he passes through and gives Buck a kiss.  Barnes just about glows with that, and Clint watches it carry him through the rest of his encounters, Banner and Stark and Potts and Wilson and everyone else who stops by as they work their way through the gathering.   
  
It’s a warm, almost-calm party atmosphere.  It’s- nice.  
  
The hulking blonde trying to lurk unobtrusively with absolutely no chance of success is new, though.  
  
And then he realizes under the t-shirt and denim it’s Thor.  
  
“Might I speak to you a moment, friend archer?”  
  
There is not enough pie in the world for this.  
  
“Sure.”  
  
  
  
So it turns out that, at least as far as Asgard knows, Loki is dead.  Thor mourns, but with the watchfulness of one who knows not to count someone out until you’ve salted the ashes- which is just… so… reassuring.  Really.  He doesn’t try to lie about it, at least, but Clint’s smile is taking on the stretch of a rictus.  Which brings Tall, Blond and Studly to his point-  
  
“There is not sufficient weregild at my disposal to offer up in light of the hurts my kinsman inflicted- and I have found that what suffices in Asgard does not serve justice as meted in Midgard.  So while I work to restore the damages wrought, I seek also to find what would offer true peace to those injured.  It seems to vary much among individuals, and so must my offering to them.”  
  
“So what are you saying?”  Clint knows damn well that the fight-or-flight reaction he’s getting is- irrational, is inadequate, has no bearing on the here and now and he clamps down on it as hard as he can, trying not to be scared of the simple presence of someone that brings back all of the _reality_ of Loki and his blue scepter.

“I mean to offer you something particular to your circumstances- you are soon to be a father, if I guess aright.  I- have not the skill of my mother, nor the worship of your people, but among my named duties is to bless unions with health and fertility, to offer up my name and my strength in pursuit of same.  And while I am no great conjurer,” Thor says, slow and solemn and his words ringing clear despite the slight off-ness of what Clint reads from his lips.  “Still there is power I may command, in your benefit.”   
  
“Lay it on me.”  
  
It’s not actually _for_ him, it turns out.  Thor wants to give- some kind of magical hoodoo blessing to Buck and Jellybean.  Clint manages to direct him to ask Bucky and Steve if they think it’s a good idea- they’d be the ones to talk to.  
  
He escapes and joins Tony, downing a good bit of whatever it is Stark’s having.  
  
  
  
“You know, if you want to feel her kick, you can just _ask_ first.”   
  
“Nay, my friend- I offer this blessing in good faith.  It is a small boon, but a real one.”  
  
Thor kneels before Bucky, who is sitting Buddha-like with his belly cradled in his hands and his brows raised, while Steve rests his hands on his shoulders and looks on skeptically.  Mjolnr is set between them on the carpet, handle up and head down.  
  
It’s a short ritual, and if Clint were to say based on what little he knows beyond circus theatrics, kind of half-assed as well.  But there’s power there, and meaning, and he’s real glad he’s clear of it just as he’s kind of pissed that he can’t get mad at Steve and Bucky for going through with it as well.  
  
Their friendly local Asgardian murmurs softly, and the sounds are even more at odds with what Clint can lip-read from him (it’s not his hearing aids, he’s checked, it’s some kind of translator ability called the Allspeak).  He holds his hand palm-out about an inch away from the hammer’s handle, thick fingers spread.  
  
“-call upon your power to build and to strengthen, to offer blessing to this mighty warrior.  Hindered, he prevailed.  Hurt, he strived.  Hounded, he-“  
  
It goes on like that for a while- Thor’s version of spell-casting seems to involve a bit of epic poetry instead of magic words, listing the worthy deeds and the needful wish of the bless-ee.  Even as he beseeches the power of the hammer, there’s a rising pressure in the room, centered where Thor holds up his hand, and it’s like no one else can feel it but Clint.  
  
“With all that is mine to give- I offer you safe passage into this world, little one.  Be welcomed, in your own time, and be safe and hale, when that time comes.”  And he touches Bucky’s belly, hand between hands.  
  
There’s no zap, no glow- but the building tension in the air is gone.  
  
Barnes doesn’t look like he’s noticed anything except Thor copping a feel, and smirks at the casually-dressed thunder-god.  Steve is smiling a bit himself, and plays with Bucky’s scruffy ponytail.  But good wishes are appreciated, and they both offer up thanks which Thor graciously accepts.  
  
  
  
And the party goes on.  
  
Until Barnes finally sends a glance his way, looks at Steve, and then says “Help me up.”  
  
Rogers gives him an arm, letting him lever himself upright, and steadies him at the small of his back while the former assassin settles onto his feet.  Then he hauls Steve over to where Clint is sitting with half a pie uneaten and a glass of something harsh, and holds out his other arm.  
  
“We’re leaving now.”  
  
Clint considers protesting, but in the end, he just loops his arm in Bucky’s, and lets him and Steve make their charming goodbyes while he follows where Barnes leads him.  
  
They get back home to Steve’s floor, and their humongous bed, and hold him between them while he quietly has his freak-out.  
  
They’re both still there when he comes out of it, calm but exhausted.  Their hands are on him, their bodies beside him, Steve’s breadth and Buck’s weight and then their lips are on him too, hands twining around him.  
  
Oh.  
  
 _Oh._  
  
  
............

 

“Are we all on the same page now?”   
  
Buck is snuggled at his side, Steve reaching across his mismatched shoulders to rub at the back of Clint’s neck.  For someone who had to stay silent and obedient for so long, Barnes is a talker when he’s feeling all right.  
  
“Because anyone wanting off the ride can get out if they can stand up.  I won’t keep anyone who wants to go, but I’m not lettin’ either of you off unless you tell me to,” Bucky whispers.  His pale eyes and stroking fingers rest on Clint’s face, searching for his answer.  “This is not a fluke.  Nobody is ‘just standing the captain’s watch.’  I need you both.  I want you both.  For her, _and_ for me.  Us.”  
  
Clint sighs, and just burrows in tighter.  His arm wraps around Buck’s waist, and the baby kicks between them.  Steve folds them both into a deeper hug, and it’s- really, _really_ nice.  
  
“And next time, speak up when you’re having a bad spot,” Rogers murmurs, drawing him further in.  “We’ll get you out of it, same as you would for us.  Like you _have_ been doing.”   
  
Barton nods silently, and buries his face against Bucky’s chest.  Metal and flesh stroke down his back, gentler than they have any right to be.  
  
“Everybody got it?  Good.”

 


	10. Chapter 10

The last month seems to linger on forever, and it’s no time at all.   
  
They time it based on blood-work and Bucky’s comfort level.  Part of him wants to hold her in forever, but the rest of him is desperate to breathe freely and be able to stand up under his own power.  In the end she’s _almost_ a Christmas baby, pulled from her father’s womb after Darcy can be called up to start her ‘vacation’ and Coulson is there to see personally to the paperwork.  
  
  
  
Here’s how it went down.  On December 23rd, at the tail-end of 2015, a scientific liaison who’d been wearing frumpy sweaters since the beginning of the cold season went to medical, complaining of cramps and bleeding.  She was delivered of a child she had not been aware of carrying, named Agent Clint Barton as the father, and insisted that he be the one to be granted custody.  Communication being what it was in the Stark building, Agent Barton was informed of his newfound responsibilities in near-real time, arrived to a positive DNA test, and signed a custody agreement as the painkillers (her) and the shock (him) were wearing off.  In as much as these things can be, it was amicable, and Barton was sent home (three floors up) with an infant in arms.  
  
This is a matter of (semi) public record.  You have to dig to find any evidence of it, but once you get past the first few layers of obfuscation, that’s the story and they’re sticking to it.  The life of an agent’s offspring is a rare and precious thing, and there is further record of both SHIELD’s generous parental leave and security detail, as well as a major slap for fraternization on Barton’s record.  
  
What’s actually happening is that at the appointed time, in the appointed place, James Barnes willingly lies back on the table and lets the docs swab down his abdomen with betadine, watching every move that they make even though the epidural has left him relying on Steve and Clint to protect him and his baby if anything should go wrong.   
  
Security’s been beefed for a good while, but they have Iron Man in the next room, Thor on patrol outside, blast-door plating down in key sections of the floor, and a brief moratorium on elevators.  Everything necessary in case of even the direst emergency is right here, and the staff has been selected, security-trained, and watched _extremely_ carefully for plants and subornation.  Clint is _armed_ , and he watches the traffic through the operating room like his namesake, because if ever someone wanted to lay hands on a brand-new supersoldier baby, now would be the time.  
  
Barnes is sitting up until they quietly insist that the table be levered back, and then he’s gripping Steve’s hand like he’s gonna crush it (though thankfully the couple of improvements Stark’s made have left him capable of modulating his grip so that it’s no more than human-normal in appropriate circumstances).  He watches, face open and fascinated, while they open his body and reach in for his baby.  Steve is trying very hard _not_ to look, and in fact is turning a lovely shade of grayish-green while stumbling to a halt in his quiet _you can do this_ speech to Bucky.  
  
Clint keeps his eyes open, watches the whole operation and keeps especially close watch over the ‘trash’, seeing where the cord and afterbirth and bloodied sponges go even as he listens to the nurses say in delighted tones, “Ten pounds, thirteen ounces, big _healthy_ girl…!”  
  
Tony changes places with him with a knightly salute as he personally escorts every bit of genetic material straight to the incinerator.  No one, but no one, is going to make a new Enlisted Man off of their baby girl- and even the small bit of cord-blood he does save is going straight into Tony’s deepest darkest freeze-vault with a coded mislabel, for the direst of ‘just in case’.  
  
By the time Clint is back, Barnes is holding a pink blanket in his arms while they mop up around his new stitches, a look like bliss and wonder and the terror that only love can bring on his face while he’s looking down at his tiny wailing daughter.  
  
“Stevie, lookit, she’s _beautiful_ …”  Clint steps in, slaps his bow into Tony’s arms, and grabs the chair on the other side of Bucky, leaning in to catch his first look.  
  
And there’s kind of a lot of crying after that.

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

Among the lower agents, Clint Barton’s scandal is a source of congratulations and mockery, as well as feeding the gossip mill that never stops turning (“For God’s sake, you people are _intelligence agents_ , fucking _act like it!_ ”)  He lets them bait him just enough to make it look good, because if this is what they’re saying then they’ve managed to clamp down on the more outlandish parts of his newfound family to level six and above, and pretty selectively on that list, too.  
  
Those who are sympathetic without being annoying, get to live.  The rest- well, he would totally start that prank war, but he needs his sleep these days.  Light duty (because even parental leave has some limits in light of their low numbers and high work-load) still means having to show up once in a while, train agents, test them, vet them, occasionally take them out for test-runs…  
  
And then he goes home to the Tower.  Steve is humming as he gently bounces the baby, and Bucky’s showering after a training session, and Sarah’s safe and warm and only a little fussy, which transmutes to a devastating belch and a little bit of spit-up once she’s over his shoulder in the traditional hand-off.  
  
Clint sighs, and pats her gently while she drifts off against his cheek, letting Steve grab the washcloth and deal with the worst of it as he’s trying hard not to laugh.  
  
“Sometimes I think you’ve trained her to do that,” he says, and Steve only shakes his head, biting down on the inside of his cheek trying and failing not to grin.  
  
  
…………  
  
  
She’s six months old when Bucky solemnly hands her over to Clint, mouth in a flat line as he turns to leave for his first ( _next_ ) mission.  He has his own, new arming rituals, ones that involve no drugs, no brainwashing, no being handled like a dangerous animal; but they are still preparations for silent, _filthy_ war, and he wants no part of it to touch his daughter.  
  
Their pact is this- only two of them on active duty at any one time, and if possible, only one on a mission.  Clint is the only one actually on SHIELD’s payroll on a permanent basis, anymore- but the Avengers, under Stark’s management, are generally available as ‘consultants,’ with Coulson as their liaison.   
  
This is something big, something that even Bucky can’t turn down in favor of his turning over a new leaf.  HYDRA’s disappeared down so many holes it may never be possible to hunt down all the rats, but his work at digging out their secrets, before the pregnancy slowed him down, has given them enough leads that they can make a real effort at burning out the sickness before it gets a chance to spread once again.  Before it has a chance to rear back and strike at those most vulnerable to it.  
  
They’ve all three had their good-bye- and come-back-safe kisses- now comes the hardest part, and that’s letting someone you love walk out the door and into danger.  
  
It’s a long night.  
  
  
  
They all have missions, at alternating times.  In daylight hours, the Avengers are a visible, popular set of unusual heroes for unusual threats, for when things have gotten just so weird that only the weirdly-skilled can handle it.  And under the cover of darkness- there is always, always more evil to root out.  
  
Sometimes it’s not HYDRA- though Fury is doing pretty well at keeping his word on not using them as his personal hit-squad.  There are other threats, other organizations that do bad things to good people, and very few of their missions are terminations, there are rescues and retrievals in droves- but sometimes they come back home, still bloody-handed and stinking of smoke, and they hold their baby girl tight, so tight.  Bucky breathes in the scent of her hair, Steve gazes at how small her fingers are, wrapped around one of his own.  Clint listens to her heartbeat, feels it humming under his own when he leans down to kiss her forehead, and knows that there’s still something right in this world.  
  
It’s a hard life they lead.  
  
It’s more than worth it, to keep her safe.

 

Bruce handles their well-baby checks, gives them a baseline to compare to when they let medical proper take a look at her.  Sarah Rebecca Barton is a remarkably healthy baby, but so far shows no other unusual signs aside from hitting her milestones picture-perfect and only a hint early.  
  
Steve’s had his moments about this, and if neither Clint nor Bucky join him at services, their thanks are still loud and clear to any god bothering to listen.  
  
She’s getting bigger now, and starting to babble, and blocks are her favorite toys.  Faint fuzz has turned to fine, dark curls, and her eyes seem to get bluer by the day.  Tony insists on dropping by and/or commandeering her about once a month in the name of corrupting the innocent, and if Barnes is nervous, well, they’ve all got to get used to the idea of sharing her once in a while.  Clint is determined to fight his instincts re: locking her up in a tower until she’s twenty-one, and Steve is the one who pushes for park-time and walks.  It is, and this is a phrase Clint has mistrusted along with lima beans and bed-times since youth- Good For Them.  
  
This is a new level of paranoia for him, and he has never felt so alive.  
  
It’s not perfect- they’re three people with various forms of battle-damage trying to hold it together for each other, and for a small person that depends utterly upon them.  But they have good reason to try, and when one of them stumbles, there’s always at least one other to help pick them up.

 

When it comes time for school, they decide to take a year, make use of one of the contingency houses and give their girl as much ‘normal’ as they can.  The place is not SHIELD-run but it _is_ SHIELD-vetted, and despite Tony’s objections, perfectly good so far as they can tell.  Sarah needs to have a wider circle of friends, have a place she can visit and be visited at easily that isn’t a penthouse 90 stories up.  She’s mostly okay with this, so long as they _promise_ that Uncle Sam and Aunty Natasha and everyone else can visit.  Bucky is finally at a point where he’s willing to consider it, so long as he’s able to set their security measures himself, which makes for a fine old time with wires and hammering and trying to remember that Russian or not, Sarah _will_ pick up on the swear-words; and maybe they’ll never be completely normal, but by God it will take a hell of an effort to tear them apart.  
  
Their inaugural barbecue is fantastic.

 

First parent-teacher conference, and Clint is itching.  It’s been a long, long time since he’s graced the hallowed halls of primary school, redolent of chalk and play-dough.  He holds Sarah’s hand as she skips alongside him, only starting to trudge and hang back shyly when they get to Room 108.   
  
“Come on, it can’t be that bad,” he says, and she ducks her head and smiles when he tousles her dark hair.  They step inside, and Sara tenses like a hound, waiting to be let loose.  
  
“Mister Barton, good to see you!  Please, sit down,” says Ms. Wallowitz.  “Sarah, if you could play in the corner, please?”  She glances up for permission, Clint nods, and she makes a beeline for the little portion of the classroom that holds the put-together and tear-down toys.  
  
He watches just long enough to see that she’s settled, then turns back to the teacher with a pleasant smile.  
  
“So! Tell me all about it.”  
  
The beaming woman proceeds to do just that.  
  
“-seems to be doing well in reading…”  Ought to be, with the books they’ve poured into her- one daddy would pretend to fall asleep, letting her sneak off to get a new book and add it to the pile, and the next one would come in and the two-story limit would become three, then four.  
  
“-playing and sharing nicely with others…”  With Steve overseeing her moral education, how could she not?  Clint knows right from wrong, but even after a lifetime, the nuances of good and bad can kind of get blurry, especially if he finds himself thinking back to the old days- and Buck, well, he knows right from wrong too, but his personal scale is much more about me-and-mine versus ‘those who would subdue us’.  Their girl will grow up good, but not naïve.  
  
“-the ‘moon-rock’ from her uncle Tony went over very well at show-and-tell, which is an improvement over the last time-“  Their baby-girl does not appreciate being called a liar.  She appreciates disappointed!face even less, and had apologized shame-facedly to the other kid.  (“Nobody likes being called names, sweetheart- but you never _ever_ start a fight unless it’s worth fighting. And as long as you know what’s true about you, it’s not worth hitting someone over.”)  
  
But now Ms. Wallowitz has grown somber, and looks at Clint over her clasped hands with brows furrowed.  
  
“I _am_ afraid that Sarah seems to be having some trouble paying attention in class.  She’s never looking at the board, and when she is, she’s squinting.  I’ve asked her to sit at the front of the class, but that seems to only make it worse…”  
  
Clint gives her his best concerned frown and nods, then puts up a hand in a ‘pause’ gesture as he glances back to where the tinker-toy activity has halted.  
  
“Excuse me one second.”  Not waiting for a reply, he’s up from his chair and walking across the room in one motion, joining Sarah where she’s abandoned the play-station to lean against the window-sill, staring intently out into the distance.  
  
“Whatcha got in your sights?”  he whispers, crouching to put himself at her level.  She doesn’t turn her head, just keeps following whatever it is with her eyes.  
  
“It’s a bird.  It’s hoppin’ around in that tree over there.”  
  
“What kind of bird?  Can you describe it to me?”  
  
She stares out at the tree.  “It’s kinda green-y grey, but his butt is paler.  He's not really pigeon-shaped, but 's not a water-bird either.  His wings have got little stripes on ’em, like birthday-cake ruffles over the black parts.  See-?  See, he’s hopping all around!”  
  
“Yeah, honey, I see him- think you can find his nest?”  
  
Ms. Wallowitz’s concerned frown follows their gazes, skimming over the tree branches without settling where they do.  All she’s seeing is a little bit of motion, a rustling of some leaves by the wind, perhaps.  Clint turns his head back towards her, ruffling Sarah’s hair while he rises.  
  
“I think I see the problem.  We’ll have a talk about it, don’t worry.”  
  
They finish up quickly after that, and then it’s down to the car with a promise of ice-cream on the way home.  He scoops her up before seatbelting her carefully, and makes a note to get her an eye-exam, checking especially for far-sightedness, but also to compare against the full gamut of his own vision records.  
  
“You’re definitely my kid, all right,” he says, and kisses her as she shrieks with giggles.

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

Daddy Bucky, Pa Clint and Papa Steve all have their hands full with Sarah, and the rest of their circle looks on amused as they balance heroics with raising a handful of a girl that lives up to just about every aspect of _may your children be just like you_.  Their best guess is that any more dramatic elements of the serum’s effects on her genes will show up in times of stress, like conditional training or puberty, but in the meanwhile, she’s got Hawkeye’s natural gift for sight _and_ at least some of his athletic abilities.  
  
“I’ve- I’ve created a gas molecule,” Bucky finally says, sitting abruptly under the shade of the enormous tree, wherein his daughter is bouncing from branch to branch like a demented squirrel.  He still turns his eyes upward, tracking her path, but he just can’t do it, he can’t run under every limb praying to catch her if she slips.  And despite the quickness of her movements, she _is_ testing each branch, learning which ones will and won’t take her.  
  
“Lemme show you something, old trick I learned,” Clint tells him, giving him a pat on the shoulder.  He then stretches up, cups his hands around his mouth, and yells _“CHOW TIME!”_  
  
She bounces down, and yips “Daddy!” as a warning, before leaping the final too-many feet towards Bucky, who scoops her out of the air and redirects her force before settling her on the ground with a kiss.  
  
“We gotta have a serious talk about gymnastics before dinner.  Now go on, get washed,” says Clint, pointing his thumb back towards the house.  Steve is on assignment, and hopefully will be home in a few days.  
  
They’re going to have to have a talk about Westchester when he does.  Maybe not this year, but there are signs cropping up that they can’t ignore.  Bucky’s been heartily opposed to the thought of her being tested, but if she keeps breaking school records in gym, there’s going to be a problem.  
  
Her best friend’s already headed there, and if they can pass muster, Xavier’s might be the answer to the question of how you keep a genetically-gifted kid under wraps without stinting her on actual education and socializing.  
  
(Stark has suggested they homeschool her in the tower, but Stark is also the one who suped up her Nerf-bow to the point where she could- and has- used it for a siege weapon.  Stark is not helpful, nor is he a good example.  Of anything.)  
  
  
  
She’s five and she wants to be a cat when she grows up.  Or a dragon.  Thor congratulates her on her excellent taste, though he warns her to beware of the creeping greed that can sicken even the stoutest heart, once it tastes flight and fire.  
  
Six, she’s in school for the first time, and it’s wonderful.  She’s an excitable kid, easily distracted, but she loves being there, learning, soaking it up faster than they can give her.  Uncle Bruce teaches her some of his ‘keep-calm’ tricks, because her teachers don’t like her bouncing all over the place.  It helps, but she still keeps a timer in her head of when the slow bits are done.  
  
(“No, Tony, you may not buy her a pony.  Besides, she wants wings like Sam’s.”)  
  
(“Uncle Sam wants you… to finish your homework!”  “You say that every time!”  “Because it’s true every time.  Come on, finish up soon and you can watch that new dragon movie while we wait for your dads.”)  
  
She’s nine, and her best friend in the world since first grade is Mara, a mutant.  Mara has beautiful pink hair that her mom ties up in braids with beads on them, and scales all down her back that flare up pointy when she’s upset (and sometimes spark when she’s angry).  Sarah has her over _all the time_ , and they play co-princesses who ride rhinoceroses into battle.  Because rhinos have better armor than unicorns, duh.

Mara has to keep secrets too- she only showed her scales to Sarah because it had been raining and they’d gotten soaked on the way from the bus to the house, and Mara had been so nervous that she’d gotten her shirt stuck on her pointy bits and needed help wrestling it off.  
  
“My mom said not to show it to anyone,” she says, shivering, while Sarah pulls out her biggest kitty-faced sweatshirt for her to wear.  “She said that government people come take kids like me away, if we’re not careful.”  Sarah goes wide-eyed at that, and sets her mouth the same way Daddy Bucky does when he’s angry about something.  
  
“My dads protect people- they wouldn’t let that happen.  _I_ won’t let that happen.”  
  
“Yeah, well…”  
  
“I’ll show you how to make someone let go if they’re grabbing you.  If anyone tries something like that, you can get away, and come get me.  And then anyone who tried it is gonna be _sorry_.”  
  
She doesn’t question the part about people snatching up kids for bad stuff.  She knows too well that that part can be true, even if other parts of the government are dedicated to snatching them back.  Bad people can be part of anything, and good people part of bad stuff.  
  
That’s why her dads and her aunts and uncles teach her stuff, so she will never be helpless even if she’s all alone.  
  
(it also means that she wins all the shooting games in the arcade, but that’s just extra.  Mara’s happy to help her spend the tickets.)  
  
  
  
She’s eleven, and she doesn’t have a care in the world yet about how she looks.  Aunty Natasha teaches her how to move with every expenditure of energy meant to kill, and how to hold back on that enough to pass for a mere girl.  She also corrects her Russian, and expands her list of swear-words in a couple of other languages.  
  
Twelve gets her the Expanded Talk- or rather, it means that she’s got biology homework from the human sexuality unit in class, and her dads have to fill in the gaps when she asks.  Xavier’s is pretty comprehensive, because with mutant anatomy the already wide human gamut gets even wider and ‘average’ goes out the window, but the circumstances of her own birth are covered under Ethics.   
  
(“Conception, not birth-“  “Ewww, Dad, _please_ -“  “No- you were a surprise, but you were one of the first things I wanted for myself past vengeance.  That’s important.”)  
  
She’s thirteen and she wants to be a rock star, with long black hair and crazy makeup.  Pa Clint teases her by making a show of turning down his hearing aid when he passes by her open door and catches her head-banging.  She pegs him with her guitar-picks, which is why he does it.

 

Fourteen… ugh, fourteen.  
  
Puberty is a nightmare.  First she gets the faint hint of curves, then she shoots up tall and coltish and she feels like she’s _starving_.  After that, no bra fits longer than a couple months because her band-size keeps changing.  Muscle comes to her faster than fat, and every move she thought she knew has to be learned _all over again_ and she’s a clumsy _idiot_ and her daddies _can’t understand-_  
  
Papa Steve takes her gently in his arms when she’s weeping. She hadn’t meant to break the mirror, but the wall next to it hadn’t stood up to her punch, and she feels like a freak even though she knew it was coming, and god, some of her friends out in Westchester have had it _so much worse_ but it’s _all wrong_ and she can’t control it…  
  
“Sweetheart, it’s okay.  It’s okay.  It’s just things, and you didn’t hurt yourself.  I guess I’m lucky- I got used to being a shrimp, and then when it happened, it was all over in an instant, no growing and stumbling and seeing yourself all stretched out before you get where you’re going.  And that’s part of why it’s scary- it takes forever feeling like nothing is right, and then you wake up one day and realize it all clicks- but why couldn’t it have felt like it was going better before then?”  
  
Aunty-mama Darcy swings by after work- how can she stay away when her Jellybean is feeling blue?  There’s movies and ice-cream on tap, and a couple of comic-books with super-strong girls, and she guesses she feels a little better after that.  
  
Daddy Bucky is silent, just pulls her into a hug when she passes by.  She curls into him, and he rests his chin on top of her head, arms curled around her shoulders with the same reassuring weight as ever.  The couple of times she was ever really sick as a kid, he held her this way, cool metal fingers changing position on her forehead to draw away the heat, and curling around her like he would never let her go.  
  
He knows what it is to break things you care about without meaning to.  Any, _any_ thing or person that did her harm or grief, he would break his body to pieces to destroy it for her.  And he can’t fight her battles, only tell her in his own way that he will always love her.  
  
  
  
(At sixteen, she finally gets a set of the wings she’s wanted since she was eight.  Pepper was adamant that giving your teenager a car was the parents’ decision, and no one else’s- but Tony still has his ways of remaining Coolest Uncle.)  
  
(Uncle Sam is the one who helps get her qualified, though.)

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

Their life has not been entirely peaceful, despite the best efforts of the paranoid and the protective.  There was a kidnapping attempt when she was ten, which necessitated a rather large shootout and a lot of dead nu-HYDRA.  Thirteen and fifteen saw attempted invasions and disaster in New York while she was home on break, and Westchester has its own minor emergencies every so often.  She’s used the skills her family taught her more than once, usually to evade capture or to support others in the process of evac.  She’s had more training than most newbie agents, but is pretty good about not using it in inappropriate venues.  
  
This time is a little different.  
  
She’s seventeen, and at a protest with her mutant friends (it wasn’t a permission-slip matter because it was over break, and if her parents knew they’d be on the rooftops with an armory.  Hey, at least she’s not sneaking into an R-rated movie).  She can see the moment it goes bad, reacting with too much knowledge and a trained eye- one cop gets twitchy and she makes the leap, takes the rubber bullet in the arm rather than let a friend get it in the face.   
  
When Capt. Steven G. Rogers marches into the station after, scarlet with rage, no one dares stand in his way.  
  
“I’m very proud of you,” he says to his grey-faced daughter as they count out the bail.  _“Don’t you ever do that again.”_  
  
“Like you wouldn’t have.”  
  
And that’s what gets her grounded until she’s eighteen.  
  
  
…………  
  
  
Nineteen years of love, devotion and care they’ve put into her, and now they wonder where the hell they went wrong.   
  
She wants to enlist in the army.   
  
“Dad- Pa, Papa…” she says, looking from each of them to the next.  “You raised me to be what I wanted to be, to play to my strengths, to think about consequences.  And I can look at every one of the people in my life and see what serving their country’s done to them- and what it’s done for them.  I can sign up under the other-abled listing, the ‘mutie clause,’ they don’t even test for- “  
  
Bucky is still gaping, while Steve is holding his hand and looking at Sarah with quiet alarm in his face.  Clint is left to try to give voice to what they’re all feeling, fingers flexing as he tries to grasp it.  
  
“We could send you anywhere in the country, honey- hell, if you wanted to study in Europe, or Asia, we could swing that too.  If you _really_ want to use your abilities like this, you could head to the Academy on a fast-track for an agent, they’d _drool_ to take you. Why-“  
  
“Because I think I need it, Pa,” she says, all quiet dignity and big eyes, and _Christ_ , she looks like Bucky, all square face and stubborn chin, with his own dimple in the center.  “I want the ground-up experience.  Papa, Dad, I’ve always had the best you guys could throw at me and I’m grateful, but I want to go in with my friends and _serve together_.  I have advantages other folks don’t, and I can _always_ go back and lean on them- but I wanna try to earn my way on my own, until I find out what I’m really made of.”  
  
At which point, all the rest of their arguments fall apart.  Bucky still looks devastated, while Steve is looking at their daughter with mingled sorrow and respect.  
  
“Dad?  Papa, Pa, please.  Don’t just stare at me like this.”  
  
“Do you know-“ Bucky finally manages.  “Do you know how much we fought for you to be safe?”  
  
“Yes, Daddy.  I remember.  I remember the long nights when you or Pa or Papa would be out fighting someplace I couldn’t find on a map.  I remember you training me so that no one could ever keep a hold on me I didn’t like, and so I’d never meet a weapon I couldn’t use.”  Her eyes are like chips of burning ice when she continues.  
  
“I remember sitting in the hospital every time one of _you_ found a fight you couldn’t walk away from.  I’m not naïve, Dad- to give me my freedom, you gave me a skillset that only has a few places it can go.  And I’m choosing to use it this way.  Can you trust me to do that?”  
  
  
  
 _…Can we?_

 

Nick Fury, their own demonic fairy godfather, gives it the okay for reasons unknown, and Director Hill does not raise objections of her own.  Coulson is pointedly neutral from his desk, only says that with the current regulations in place, it is sufficient to let Ms. Barton off her leash under the established cover.  
  
Basic flies by when it should crawl, and because she’s passing for mutie, her scores are noteworthy ( _she was always going to be a marksman, but_ hoo _boy- she’s got the Barton talent, it’s just a matter of incentive not to miss_ ) but not red-flagged.  The specialist training for the experimental mutant units afterward tests and hones her extra abilities, matches her strength and coordination with a unit of different powers, and it’s luck (and practice) that lands her with some of her fellow Xavier-ites, including her best, best friend.  
  
  
  
It’s the night before the night she ships out, and everyone is gathered at the Tower.  Tomorrow evening she and her friends will live it up before heading into danger- but tonight is for her family.  There’s cake, and embarrassing stories, and a lot of very dangerous people being nostalgic and congratulatory.  
  
Bucky weeps openly, hugging her tight whenever he can.  She lets him, shorn head pressed to his, and whispers softly until he lets her go again.  
  
“Did you see her face,” he gasps afterward, clutching at his own.  “It was like a fucking mirror- she looked just like we did, when we were young. Oh, God- she’s going in there thinking she’s immortal, and-“  
  
“It’s going to be okay.  She knows-“ Steve tries to reassure once more, because he can’t not.  
  
 _“No one ever knows what they’re getting into!”_  
  
Clint draws him in, one of the most dangerous men on the planet, and holds tight to him while he shakes.  
  
“No, they don’t- but sometimes they gotta dive in anyway.  Ain’t nothing you can do but lead, follow, or get out of the way.  Parent-pact rule ten.”  
  
  
  
And that’s almost enough.  The letters and emails fly back and forth, carefully monitored as per the norm, and it’s really tough but she’s learning a lot and everything’s fine.  A year and more into her tour, and nothing’s gone wrong.  
  
Until they get word that her entire unit’s disappeared out on maneuvers, and nobody knows a goddamned thing.

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

It’s all gone to hell, and she’s almost certain she knows why.  
  
 _They knew we were coming.  They knew we were a mutant-based unit.  They were_ prepared.  
  
Her bruises say that they had to beat her down when the gas didn’t work on her, left her coughing and choking but not vomiting and helpless.  Around her she hears faint moans, whimpers from lumpen shapes she thinks may be her fellows in the crowded dark cell.  Mara- she strains, looking around.  The stillness almost does her in, when she finds her- Mara’s out _cold_ , none of her usual sharp spark and grinning teeth, that’s all been robbed from her by the chemical fog that took out their unit.  But she’s breathing, and that’s got to be enough for now.  
  
They’re tied, and worse- collared.  Inhibitor collars, drugs tailored to take out soldiers with X-genes- these people have funding.  And little wonder, because dealing in mutant-slaving is a small but growing industry worth a whole lot of filthy lucre.  
  
Sarah scans for cameras, hisses under her breath, then reins it in and tries to settle into that clear, cold headspace that she’s been trained to have.  This is no childhood game, and if she doesn’t do something, they’ll all just disappear into the desert and no one will ever find them.  
  
She can’t let that happen to her friends.  She can’t do that to her family.  
  
The restraints are hard, but she’s busted worse.  Collars- there’s not enough light, she can’t undo them without wondering if there’s a dead-man switch somewhere.  Better not to get her friends killed by accident trying to free them.  If Mara were awake she could do it blind-folded, but-  
  
But Mara’s not awake.  None of her comrades can help her.  _Focus on what you have._  
  
There are footsteps approaching the door.  Gripping her chains, she crouches in the darkness, and waits.  
  
  
  
  
“Let me get this straight, once more.  You awoke in the cell.  Broke your restraints.  Waited until the guard came by, took him out, and with his weapon proceeded to take out the entire rest of the camp, without a shot fired.”  
  
“It wasn’t that simple, sir,” she rasps tiredly.  “Shots would have alerted too many at once.  Once I found someone with a silencer-“  
  
“My problem here, Private, is that you claim to have taken out the _entire_ base single-handedly, with a _knife_.”  
  
“I upgraded as I went, sir.”  Like one does.  “I only started with a knife.”  
  
Bless Aunty Natasha, she thinks, for all the stealth-games that weren’t really games, and Daddy for helping her practice from the time she was able to totter.  
  
It has been a long, long day.  Four days, really.  This is not how she had intended things to go at all, and all she wants to do is grab some food, check in on Mara and the others in medical, shower, cry, throw up, and then sleep for a year.  But she doesn’t think that’s going to happen.  
  
“Who killed Sergeant Wallace?”  
  
“I did, sir.”  Her voice has long since gone grey and flat, and there is nothing but brutal honesty left in the wake of exhaustion.  
  
“Why?”  
  
“He was cooperating with them, sir.  He’d sold us to mutant-slavers.  And he was trying to kill me at the time.”  From a distance.  She’d shot the collar-remote from his hand, and it had gone up spectacularly.  She’ll certainly be dreaming about it for years to come.  
  
“Now that’s interesting.  You say they hit the whole unit with specifically anti-mutant measures.  Yet you were neither knocked out nor killed when they overpowered you, despite the little ‘ **m** ’ marked on your papers.  So what does that make you?”  
  
She gazes up dully at her interrogator.  
  
 _In deep shit, sir._

 

 

_“WHERE IS SHE?!”_  
  
The chopper’s still off the ground when they hit down, Hawkeye catching a ride under Cap’s arm to save his aging knees.  The Soldier is already rounding on the nearest officer, face set in a snarl and arm gleaming blood-hungry like his bared teeth.  
  
Senior Agent Coulson is down off the chopper a few minutes later, moving at just leisurely enough of a pace to let the full effect of the Winter Soldier in a protective rage sink in.  Captain America’s large and visible presence helps keep things from falling immediately into chaos, and Agent Barton is keeping his eyes open, channeling his own fear into vigilance.  
  
“You are relieved,” he informs the first person of sufficient rank he sees.  “We are here to investigate the unusual number of deaths and disappearances among mutant troops from this base, culminating in the loss of an _entire unit_ in one go.  You have a witness in custody.  Take us to her.”  
  
  
  
This is an awkward moment.  
  
This is the moment where a man realizes that his clever scheme to profit through the betrayal of those under his command has fallen through, and he has one witness, in his sights, who has figured things out.  In addition to which, there are helicopters overhead that he’s fairly certain aren’t his, and a whole lot of hullabaloo outside to the tune of ‘special investigations’ and ‘SHIELD’ and ‘”Captain _freakin’_ America!”’  
  
This is also the moment when he tries to go for a hostage, and failing that, to clean up a material witness who can be blamed as a spy and/or a mutie traitor, depending on how much he needs to lie.  
  
This is the moment when he chooses _very, very badly._  
  
  
  
They’re already sprinting, but the shot makes them _run_.  Three full-on Avengers and terrified fathers arrive in the tent, bristling with weaponry and ready for a fight-  
  
Sarah has her arms straining, locked around her commanding officer’s neck, and is in the process of kicking his discharged sidearm away.  She looks up, mouth dropping at the sight of her astonished dads, and groans.  
  
“I swear, this is not what it looks like.”  
  
“Developed an issue with authority, have we, Private Barton?” says Uncle Phil, strolling in behind them.  
  
“Only when they try to kill me, sir.”  
  
That gets Bucky, Steve, and Clint’s eyes all focused on the man she’s currently choking out, who’s turning an amazing shade of red as he hisses and tries to scrabble at her.  Bucky takes a step forward, hands ready to tear him apart, only to stop as his family holds him back.  
  
It’s over fairly quickly after that.  
  
Sergeant Wallace’s commander and accomplice is bundled away, as are files and computers.  The whole thing is covered up with genuine investigation into the new anti-mutant measures and what’s left of the slaving outpost Sarah’s unit had been sent toward.  She’s going to be facing a long debrief herself, once her fathers are sure she’s alright.   
  
“Think my career’s sunk?” she murmurs, half a sob of laughter coming out of her while they all three hold her tight.  
  
“It’s a family tradition,” Clint says, half-way to hysterical himself.  “Aww, baby- you’re gonna be stuck with us.  It’s all right…”  
  
Steve pats her back, while Bucky holds her tight enough to creak.  In full tac gear, it’s about the least comfortable embrace she’s ever had, and it’s wonderful.  
  
“I gotta…” she whispers, dipping her head towards the medical tent.  
  
“We’ll let you check on your friends in a minute.  Just…”  
  
Just a couple of minutes more.  
  
  
  
In the future, they’ll name this as one of her defining moments, the first steps in an origin story that only a few would be privileged to know for many years.  Codenames come and go, but reputation has a way of lingering, and the name that Loki mocks her with through a grinning mouthful of blood will be what she is known by throughout five realms and two galaxies.  Someday she will be known for a clear and deadly shot, the kind that leaves one dead or wounded and many rescued, and she will be called the Chooser of the Slain.  
  
But here and now, she is their little girl, and she is held in their arms.  
  
  
  
A Barton, a Barnes and a Rogers try to raise a kid together.  
  
What the hell else was gonna happen?

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, all. Gathering this up from where I posted it on the kink-meme, hope you enjoy. I will be cleaning up/neatening a little as I go. Original prompt can be found here- http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/19023.html?thread=44681807#t44681807


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